On Monday 10/19 I drove off to a little town in upstate New York to meet up with my sister and traveling companion. Bright and early on Tuesday morning we headed to the airport for our date with Delta airlines. I fly quite often and for a long time Delta was my airline of choice but that is starting to change. Delta is being edged out by Southwest and on this trip I had a chance to really compare the 2 airlines. We were flying Delta to San Antonio and Southwest on our return from New Orleans.

Our flight was a two parter with a layover and change of planes in Detroit.  I say that only because I’ve had the misfortune to witness first hand extreme rudeness from Delta attendants. One time the flight attendant lost her temper with an elderly couple who just wanted to sit together. She screamed and yelled at them and threatened to have them “removed from the airplane”.

Another time the attendant was upset over something unknown and threw the hand set to the intercom across the cabin. Whew! I sat very quietly all through that flight!

But I digress. I don’t go into these flights expecting a bad experience. In fact it has always surprised me when there’s an outburst like that. So back to our situation.

I paid extra for us to have more legroom on the 1st half of the trip from Albany to Detroit and I had specifically selected aisle seating. As we were getting ready to board Sandy mentioned that our seats had been changed. She’d been moved from an aisle to a window and so had I. To make it even worse I was in row 1 so there is no seat in front of me for my carry on. My carry on had to go in the overhead bin or get checked.

Since I had a laptop and about $2400 worth of camera equipment in my carry on you can imagine I did not want to be separated from my luggage. It was at that point that I realized that our “friendly” attendant was not a morning person. Maybe she hadn’t had her coffee yet because she was not fooling around. Of course she wouldn’t help me try to make it fit in the overhead either. You’d think if you have a customer that will pay extra for a seat upgrade that you’d treat them a little nicer  but noooo, she just stood at the front of the plane telling me to get a move on because I was holding everyone up. I finally gave in and let her check the bag. (Against my better judgement, I might add.)

I told her if there was any damage I would hold Delta responsible to which she said I was out of luck because she had given me a verbal warning about checking a fragile item.

The laptop did not make it unscathed but the damage was minor and can be worked around. Thankfully the camera and lens were fine. I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad. The poor trainee flight attendant was being growled at the whole flight. She was just one of those “not nice” people.

The 2nd half of the trip was uneventful. My carry on went into the overhead with no problem but it seems every trip on Delta there’s at least one unhappy flight attendant.

It was good to arrive in San Antonio and leave the unfriendly skies behind.